Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

O p i n i o n s &. N o t e s
the endearments of sisterly affection, the
refinement of literary tastes, but ill prepared
the emigrant's wife to work in the
rugged and inclement wilderness"
Think ofthat ye braggarts accustomed to
dub your country the "Home of independence."
Talk of cultivated farms, of pleasant
Homesteads and luxuriant crops in a
"desert." The thing is positively preposterous.
We are dragging out a miserable existence
in a "rugged and inclement
wilderness," and worse than all, we seem to
be ignorant that it is so. We imagine ourselves
happy, poor, ignorant folks! and
Blackwood tells the Ladies of Britain in
their carpeted saloons, we are miserable
beyond conception. Was ignorance ever
known to be bliss before?
But we begin to be serious, and certainly
not inclined to laugh, when we see writers
ranked at the head of the Literature of the
Empire speaking of Canada as a remote
wilderness. Is it possible that the writer in
Blackwood is ignorant that this remote "residence"
is within 12 days travel of
Liverpool, and the "carpeted saloons"—a
journey no greater than that between the
extremities of the diminutive Island of
Britain some half a century ago? Or what
are this wiseacre's ideas of distance? Fifty
years ago, Niebuhr, the great historical
critic, travelled from London to the
Northern metropolis, in 4' days, and
records the unprecedented feat for the
information of his wonder stricken countrymen.
Give us a Railway from the port of
Halifax—and we believe a few years will see
the completion of this great undertaking—
and this remote region may be reached in
60 hours' longer time than Niebuhr's expeditious
journey through half the island of
Britain.
The diffusion of sound information
respecting the condition and resources of
the country is a matter which could not fail
to tell very powerfully on its material
progress as well as on the social prosperity
of the people. That such information is at
the present time accessible every one must
be prepared to admit. And for this reason it
becomes more lamentable that British journalists
and Reviewers, for the sake, it may
be, of gratifying a taste for romance and
novelty, are found at this moment pawning
such counterfeit pictures of Canadian life
as that which we have noticed, on the
gullible natives of the three kingdoms. That
fanciful and fabulous stories should form a
standard guide book for the emigrant is a
more serious matter than at first sight
appears. The people of Britain will read,
and what more palatable reading do they
expect to find than in the pages of the great
magazines of the metropolis, in which is
concentrated the best talent of the country?
So long, therefore, as the periodical literature
of Britain is prejudiced against
Colonial interests, whether willfully or
through ignorance, so long these interests
suffer in the eyes of those on whom they
are mainly dependent for favour and furtherance.
In view of this, while deploring
the continued circulation of mythical treatises
on Canadian affairs, we hail, as an
omen for good, the manifestations given of
an increased taste within the Province for
scientific and literary pursuits; believing
[sic] that in the cultivation of these a standard
literature will be formed within the
country, which will ultimately give character
and tone to such foreign publications as
aim at an honest and impartial transcript
of Canadian history.
From the Toronto Examiner, Wednesday,
June 16,1852
204